Golf, one of the oldest sports in our country, is played on courses all over the world with very little equipment or rule differences from country to country. There are two types of driving golf clubs, namely irons and woods. The irons, approximately 8-10 per golf set, are the focus of this invention. The typical golfer will utilize his irons whenever he or she needs to move the ball from an area where a golf tee cannot be used, such as on the rough or the fairway. The tee, of course, supports the golf ball and allows a clean ball and club impact without the club head touching the ground. A wood club is typically used for tee shots. With iron shots, where a tee is generally not used, the club head is forced into the grass, soil or sand to contact the ball.
Golf club irons, being numbered in consecutively ascending order up to nine, with an additional wedge, have control grooves disposed on their ball striking face. These grooves, sometimes designed as V-shaped, U-shaped and/or square grooves, play a major roll in ball control. As the club face strikes the ball, these grooves help in grasping, controlling and spinning the ball. Unfortunately, when a good shot is made, a divot (a piece of turf, grass and/or dirt) is often dislodged from the ground by the club, leaving dirt, grass and/or sand in these grooves. If a player continues to play the game without cleaning these grooves and the club face, each and every subsequent shot will be effected by this foreign material. As debris gathers and fills the control grooves on the club, control is soon lost and distance and accuracy will be adversely effected.
Therefore, it is essential that the club head, especially the face and control grooves therein, be cleaned after each shot. In addressing this problem, there have been a number of devices incorporating cleaning brushes to be used on the club heads. Such devices include housings containing brush elements disposed therein which are applied against the club face, or, alternatively, the club head is inserted into the housing and moved back and forth in engagement with the interior brushes. Oftentimes, such housings also contain a cleaning solution which surrounds the brush elements to aid in the cleaning action.
While such devices are relatively effective, they suffer a certain limitation in that the brushing action is typically applied in a transverse direction to the orientation of the control grooves. That is, these types of housings only allow the golf club to be inserted vertically, with the shaft of the club oriented perpendicularly to the plane defining the opening of the housing. The transverse action of the brushes is inadequate to completely remove all debris particles from the innermost corner regions of the control grooves. A parallel brushing action is the only effective way to fully remove the tiny particles from these regions of the control grooves. However, the construction of the prior art housings do not allow for the insertion of the golf club so that the club face will move across the brushes in a parallel direction.